In semi-conductor technology it is necessary to transport wafers, or parts of wafers, in different stages of manufacture and to deposit them in various processing apparatuses. For this purpose the wafers are fixed to a handling device which takes on this transportation task. There exist a wide variety of possibilities for fixing the wafers. The most common method consists in depositing the wafer on a board with vacuum grooves and fixing it thereto by connecting a vacuum. It is also known to clamp the wafer to the edge, wherein damage can occur to the wafer hereby. In addition it is known to fix the wafer to an adhesive film, as is primarily used in wafer sawing operations. Still other methods fix a wafer by gluing to a holding device, wherein as a result of different effects, such as UV light or the effects of temperature, these glued joints are constructed so as to either hold permanently or in other cases the gluing property is designed so as to be non-captive.
All of said fixing methods are only conditionally suitable or not suitable at all for fixing extremely thin wafers. Standard wafers have a thickness of approximately 300 to 800 μm. There is a need however to fix wafers with a thickness of about 2 to about 80 μm and to be able to transport them back and forth between various processing stations without damage. Extremely thin wafers of this type are not flat like the standard wafers but, owing to their low thickness and their prior processing steps, are very undulated as a result of the introduction of warping. Regardless of said problems of fixing thin wafers of this type in order to transport and/or planarise them, owing to their crystalline structure the extremely thin wafers are also highly susceptible to fracture.